Baltimore Evening Sun (11 October 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

From the Hot Towel’s report of a railroad wreck:

The faces of the men assumed a serious look (!). The engineer felt the jolt immediately * * * (!!!).

Good morning! Have any disorderly houses opened in your block? Not yet? Well, be patient. The Vice Crusaders, those pious and impeccable brothers, are doing their best to scatter them. Soon your neighbors will be coming to you with whispers. Soon you will be sitting up nights, watching a house across the street. Soon you will be bawling for the police and rushing to the grand jury.

Time was when such houses were confined, with few exceptions, to definite reservations, areas of scarlet, pales of sin. Every adult Baltimorean, not an idiot, knew where those reservations were. No one, not even a Vice Crusader, ever got into them by accident. The police had lists of the houses, or at least of nine-tenths of them, and so could keep them under reasonable control. As such places go, they were decently conducted. They were not dens of thieves. The cop on the corner had his eye on every one.

But no more. The Vice Crusaders close them up and scatter their inmates. These inmates, fearing further pursuit, naturally try to keep under cover. Their one aim is to avoid detection, to masquerade as respectable women. What will be the ultimate result? Simply that a multitude of clandestine disorderly houses, many of them in quiet, decent neighborhoods, will take the place of the open and obvious disorderly houses now ordered closed. Baltimore will come to the condition that New York is in. No street, north, east, south or west, will be wholly beyond suspicion. The poor will have prostitution under their very eyes.

This hounding of women is not new in the world. It has been tried in other cities, at home and abroad. And it has always brought about a situation far worse than the one it has sought to remedy. Lonaon has no disorderly houses: they were all closed years ago, and they have been kept closed. But have you eyes walked down Piccadilly at 11 o’clock at night? Have you ever been in the Alhambra music hall? In New York disorderly houses are raided daily, and there is endless talk of prosecuting their owners. But have you ever been on Broadway after the theatre?

Again, consider Chicago’s experience. Raids began there a year or so ago and proceeded with extraordinary ferocity. On March 1 last the general manager of the Baltimore Vice Crusade argued in The Evening Sun that Chicago was clean, and that Baltimore might be made clean, too. But was Chicago clean? Of course it wasn’t. A week ago there were more raids--and hundreds of women were turned out. A year hence the crusaders will be rattling again. And the year after that. And the year after that. The women will scatter. It will become more and more difficult to run them down. But they will not appreciably diminish in numbers.

That the current Vice Crusaders in Baltimore are earnest and honest men no one denies. They believe, I have no doubt, that they are doing a valuable public service. Some of them, in fact, fairly drip with conscious virtue. But let no one forget that men so venerable to themselves, and so intolerant of dissent, and so thoroughly convinced that all persons who oppose them are sinners and will go to Hell--let no one forget that such men are not the safest fellows to grapple with the complex problems of civilization. What is to be done about prostitution? I don’t know. But this I do know: that if anything intelligent and effective to ever done about it, it will not be done by men who deny the plain facts of lite and presume to an infallibility which would be ridiculous were it not so costly to society.

The Hon. James Harry Preston to the great masses of the plain people:

I have felt rather disinclined, heretofore, to take any very active part in the political campaign this fall, but the apathy that exists * * * seems to me to demand some heroic * * * action.

Well, why shouldn’t a man who thinks that he is a hero admit it frankly? One blast upon this one’s bugle born were worth ten thousand men. He elected the Hon. Arthur Pue Gorman, Jr., last November. He will carry the sewer rental plan, one way or the other, by 15,000 votes next month. He could have had the Vice-Presidency if--but let us not go into that.

Meanwhile, let no honest Democrat shed clammy sweat. The Hon. Mr. Wilson will be elected anyhow. It is too late to ruin him.

From the estimable Sunpaper of this morning:

some unsympathetic cynic, like the Free Lance.

Definition of “cynic,” from the Century Dictionary:

Of or pertaining to a dog; dog-like; as, cynic spasm.

Well, why repine? A dog has notable virtues. Compared to the average dog, indeed, the average man makes a very poor showing. For example, put the worst collie you can imagine beside the best politician you can imagine.

From the boomiferous balderdash of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association:

The present mortality rate [in Baltimore) is 16 per 1,000 of population per annum.

From the last annual report of the State Board of Health, signed by Dr. William H. Welch:

In Baltimore city the death rate was 19.19.

The Honorary Pallbearers have swallowed the Travelers and Merchants’, but it will be a long while before anyone swallows the Honorary Pallbearers.--Adv.

Come on, Col. Pabst, let us have a sample seidel of that Baltimore Muenchener! We are as dry and as melancholy as autumn leaves in Vallambrosa.--Adv.

The exquisite rivalry of the platitudinarians:

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The recall of judges: a scheme for taking one jackass off the bench and putting 100,000 in his place: rotation in asininity.

Avoid tin rooferas, head waiters, ontologists, prosecutors of anatomy, book agents, motormen, histologists, wire-tappers, witch doctors and alleged members of the Concord Club! Burns is one and all!